Motion design, video, branding

Roles: Producing, art direction, motion design, writing, editing

At SLAC, I not only got to make art about amazing science, but I also got to wear many hats, including producer, writer, motion designer/animator, and art director.

Producing/writing/

motion design

One of my chief roles at SLAC was to tell the stories of our science in a compelling, engaging way. To do this, I would regularly work with our editorial team to identify stories that could best be told through motion graphics, animation, and video. Once we found a good story, I'd read the scientific paper, write a script, and then do the motion design/animation, editing, and voiceover, working with the scientists along the way to create fun videos that were also scientifically accurate.

Above are two of my best videos: One that explains a bizarre X-ray laser paper that involves the principle behind Schrodinger's Cat, and another that explains Einstein's most famous equation in a fun, accessible way.

Branding

At SLAC, we had a style guide, but nothing that specifically discussed video or motion design. We also had no specific method for branding our videos aside from an old logo animation. When I first started at SLAC, I updated our logo animation with a new version that spoke to our experience in accelerators in a more modern style. I also adopted our color palette into the lab's motion design and created a semi-flat style that had some wiggle room depending on the type of project--flatter for more technical animations, and slightly more dimensional for natural phenomena and more cinematic pieces.

One last thing:

I got to make a movie trailer for an x-ray laser upgrade.